For those who are home, and for those who are on the way. For those who support the historic and just return of the land of Israel to its people, forever loyal to their inheritance, and its restoration.
“The main, immediate beneficiaries of what is known as the ‘Arab spring’ are Hamas and Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip,” Israeli military analyst Ron Ben-Yishai reported on Ynet the other day.
His and similar reports haven’t attracted much attention, and perhaps it’s understandable. There’s been a mass murder in Norway, and, in Israel, raucous public protests over housing prices. But the deterioration in Gaza is surely worthy of note, and, for Israelis, likely to be more significant than the cost of flats.
Ben-Yishai, noting the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt since Mubarak’s downfall, says “the group’s influence prompted Egypt’s government to completely halt construction” of an underground metal wall between Egyptian Sinai and Gaza. Built with U.S. assistance, it was supposed to block smuggling tunnels.
Now, though, “the Egyptian regime is making no effort to curb new tunnels and has virtually suspended its battle against smuggling…to the Strip.”
This is bad enough, but in addition, “Egyptian security forces preoccupied with domestic developments [have] completely lost their hold on the Sinai….” That means, along with the enhanced global jihad presence in the peninsula, that
[s]ome 300,000 Bedouins belonging to four or five large tribes are now the Sinai’s true rulers. These tribes’ main income is based on smuggling in general, and on smuggling to Gaza in particular, and they quickly exploited the security vacuum in the peninsula in the wake of the revolution.
Last February when the “Arab spring” was still young, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman was in Cairo harshly berating Israel for not reacting enthusiastically. But if Israel wasn’t celebrating the events at that time, it has even less reason to do so now.
“As a result,” says Ben-Yishai, of the abandoned work on the wall and Sinai’s descent into a Wild West,
arms shipments to the Strip have been surging…: everything that has been sent by the Iranians and their emissaries in recent years and was hidden by the Bedouins…has flowed freely into Gaza in the past five months. Meanwhile, new shipments arrived and were transferred to Hamas and Islamic Jihad without delay or a need to hide them.
Recently discovered gas and oil fields could make Israel one of the world’s largest energy producers. That threatens Iran’s power, which is why its agents in Lebanon are manufacturing a border dispute.
Now that Israel has discovered what appear to be huge gas and oil fields off its Mediterranean coast, Hezbollah general secretary Hassan Nasrallah and Beirut’s Hezbollah-allied ministers are labeling the Jewish state’s internationally recognized maritime borders as an “aggression” against Lebanon—even though it seems that the Arab country may have plenty of gas and oil off its coast, too. Lebanon’s real problem is that few investors want to take a chance spending billions of dollars exploring for energy in a country run by a terrorist organization. As a result, Hezbollah, cut off from normal sources of global capital, wants to do its best to keep investors away from Israel, too—by threatening war. And American policymakers are concerned that if Hezbollah’s newly invented sea-border dispute between Lebanon and Israel isn’t solved, the oil and gas fields will turn into an underwater Shebaa Farms—the piece of real estate that has served as Hezbollah’s casus belli since Israel’s 2000 withdrawal from Lebanon.
The Tamar field, discovered in 2009 roughly 50 miles off Haifa, is estimated to contain 9 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, while the Leviathan field, discovered further west in June 2010, is double that at 18 trillion cubic feet, one of the largest offshore finds in the last decade. And yet much more important, a former Royal Dutch Shell chief scientist who’s now chief scientist for Israel Energy Initiatives “has devised an ambitious plan that would, if successful, turn Israel into one of the world’s leading oil producers,” according to an Energy Tribune report earlier this year. It turns out that the oil-shale deposits in Israel’s Shfela Basin, 30 miles southwest of Jerusalem, hold some 250 billion barrels of oil—roughly equal to Saudi Arabia’s proven reserves. In other words, Israel may well become a player in the highly competitive field of energy-producing nations, which includes Hezbollah’s patron, Iran.
Israel argues that the maritime border should begin at a 90-degree angle from the coastline, while Lebanon says that it should continue in the same direction as the land border. But if Lebanon were to insist on that principle across the board, says David Wurmser, a former consultant to Noble Energy, a Houston-based firm with a large stake in the Tamar and Leviathan fields, “it would lose a lot of its territorial water to Syria. It’s clear who’s calling the shots here.”
The twist is that even as the Lebanese government gussies up phony challenges to Israel’s maritime borders, the map it submitted to the United Nations does not actually challenge Israel’s claims to the biggest prize that the Eastern Mediterranean has ever had to offer. If Syria has its own reasons for interfering with Lebanon’s border issues, so does Iran, it seems, which is using its Lebanese asset to keep a potential industrial rival in check. That is, the dispute is not personal: It’s not about Zionism, or liberating Jerusalem. This is not ideological, but strictly about business.
Doubtless, many in the Middle East believe the ideologies to which they’ve sworn their lives. And yet that same part of the Arab world that produced Wahabbism—the Persian Gulf—is also most in favor of normalization of relations with Israel. Indeed, the Saudis themselves have reportedly cooperated with Jerusalem on security issues regarding Iran—because what really matters to Arab rulers is holding on to their rule.
The New York Times gets caught editing inconvenient facts out of a "pro-Palestinian" story.
Israel’s parliament has passed a law against encouraging boycotts on Israel. Naturally, the parliamentary debate and the text of the bill itself were in Hebrew. Thus, the American news media get to explain what’s in the bill, why it was passed, and what it means. That’s where the problem arises. It also leads to an Internet age trick that tells volumes about how the American media operates nowadays. First, the background, then the rather shocking trick.
Fairly typical of coverage is the New York Times article by Isabel Kershner, headlined “Israel Bans Boycotts Against the State.” It casts the central conflict around the bill in these terms:
Critics and civil rights groups denounced the new law as antidemocratic and a flagrant assault on the freedom of expression and protest. The law’s defenders said it was a necessary tool in Israel’s fight against what they called its global delegitimization.
The article’s text makes it clear who the “good guys” and “bad guys” are supposed to be and portrayed the law as “antidemocratic” and a sign of creeping totalitarianism in the Middle East’s only democratic state.
In fact, as even Kershner reported, there is a debate within the Israeli government about the law, with Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein backing the bill and Knesset legal adviser Eyal Yinon arguing that elements of it border on unconstitutional restrictions on speech. There will almost certainly be a legal challenge and the law might well be modified or overturned completely. That is normal democratic procedure.
If the reporting wasn’t bad enough, the newspaper also published an editorial, “Not Befitting a Democracy,” that begins dishonestly:
Israel’s reputation as a vibrant democracy has been seriously tarnished by a new law intended to stifle outspoken critics of its occupation of the West Bank.
After all, the law is not focused on justifying the country’s policy on the West Bank — an argument used since the Times expects its readers to agree that the law is terrible if posed in those terms — but primarily against boycotts organized by those who want to wipe the country as a whole off the map.
Today, Israel's Supreme Court rejected the appeal of IDF soldiers against the film, "Jenin, Jenin." The court did rule that it film was full of lies, it technically didn't slander 5 specific IDF soldiers who brought the lawsuit against the film's director.
Shortly after the film's release, it was banned by the Israeli Film Board on the grounds that it only showed one side of the story and that it was slanderous. The five soldiers' lawsuit included 13 incidents it describes as libel, including a section of the film that had been edited to give the impression that a bulldozer had run over a group of Palestinians lying on the ground. In dismissing the suit, the judges ruled that even though Bakri's film was "full of things that are not true" and even though it was hurtful to the feelings of the five soldiers, there was no provision under the law for them to bring a civil claim against Bakri because the film made reference to the IDF's operations in Jenin as a whole and not to any specific soldier. "Attributing acts such as those described in the film to IDF soldiers are some of the worst accusations that can be thrown at someone. It puts them on a par with the very worst war criminals and the very worst murderers. The allegations in the film are very severe and cannot be underestimated," wrote Judges Miriam Naor, Yitzhak Amit and Yoram Danziger. "In the final analysis, it is my belief that a reasonable person viewing the film would not recognize any slander against any single soldier belonging to the group of soldiers fighting in Jenin." (JPost)
Who cheers for director Bakri -- Palestinians? Neo Nazis? Terrorists?
Guess again!
The folks running the "New Israel" Fund refer to Bakri, the film's director as "an esteemed actor and director" and they even gleefully sponsored a screening in New York of his latest anti-Israel film. Proudly informing the world of their support for Bakri, the New Israel Fund put this information on their own website! (You don't have to look very hard to find it).
If you want to fully understand what the New Israel Fund is all about, you just need to understand that they support some of Israel's worst enemies, who have been unmasked by Israel's own Supreme Court.
The New Israel Fund is proudly supporting a director whose film is "full of things that are not true" [LIES], a film that is hurtful to IDF soldiers, [SLANDER] and "Attributing acts such as those described in the film to IDF soldiers are some of the worst accusations that can be thrown at someone. It puts them on a par with the very worst war criminals and the very worst murderers. The allegations in the film are very severe and cannot be underestimated." [SEVERELY ATTACKING THE IDF].
Freedom of Speech is crucial to Israel's democracy.
Why the New Israel Fund advocates free speech, yet associates itself with slanderous liars like Muhammad Bakri, makes you wonder what sort of "New Palestine Israel" they are trying to fund.
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The first thing I saw when I started checking the news this morning was an article on the New York Times website... dead center, right at the top.
Apparently a group of left wing Israeli women had successfully smuggled a bunch of Palestinian women from the 'West Bank' over the Green Line, and had taken them for an outing to the beach.
The article was accompanied by a photo of the women cavorting together in the surf.
Now there are a few ways this kind of story could go;
1. It could be a warm fuzzy human interest story about how people on opposite sides of a bloody conflict have more in common than separates them. The most famous example of the genre is the Christmas cease fire during WWI when British and German troops came up out of their trenches and declared an unofficial truce, during which they exchanged gifts, sang seasonal songs and even played a game of soccer there in the mud between their lines.
2. It could be a one-sided propaganda piece designed to show how terrible the lives of these poor Palestinian women really are as as a result of the Israeli occupation/oppression, and how, through the help of a few 'good Jews' these women; "most [of whom] had never seen the sea before" were able to escape their virtual prison and refresh themselves in the cooling waters of the Mediterranean.
Which way do you think The Times went?
The timing of the beach party story/photo was also telling, coming as it does in the midst of an unusually oppressive heat wave in the Times' readership's core distribution area.
A few things the Times takes great pains to tell the readers:
The defiance was extremely risky due to the evil Israeli government:
"The women were Palestinians from the southern part of the West Bank, which is landlocked, and Israel does not allow them in. They risked criminal prosecution, along with the dozen Israeli women who took them to the beach. And that, in fact, was part of the point: to protest what they and their hosts consider unjust laws."
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At least 76 people have been murdered in Norway in the country's most shocking and horrific terror attack in the country's history. Words are being thrown around - as is the blame. Already, people are criticizing the police for not getting there fast enough, for not being prepared. My country is prepared for such a massacre of innocents, and let me tell you, there is, to mangle Tevye's quote from Fiddler on the Roof, no great honor in being prepared.
We are prepared because we have been living this reality for decades. Our children are raised with the same trauma these Norwegian youth are feeling. Those that survived will be afraid - afraid of the dark, of being in places where things aren't locked, of noises and things that move quickly in the peripheral of their sight. If they are like my youngest daughter, they won't believe their parents can protect them - we failed already once and cannot be trusted. In my case, perhaps it is guilt by association - I'm a parent...and little Hadas Fogel's parents didn't, couldn't protect her. All evidence points to the fact that Ruthie Fogel managed to protect her two small sons by blocking the door behind which they slept. That thought brings my daughter comfort and last night, for the first time in months, she slept with the window opened and the door to her bedroom unlocked.
I did not tell her about what happened to the children in Norway. She has suffered enough trauma and I do not want to bring it all back to her again after she has, slowly over the months, begun to put this behind her.
The children of Norway, in fact all of Norway will cry rivers of tears, only to find that even when you think you have cried your last, there is more. And they will wonder at the hatred of one man, who could inflict such suffering on those he never met, those who did nothing to him, those who wanted to live.
Labels are needed, or so people think, to make put this tragedy into terms that can be understood, blamed. "Christian fundamentalist" is one that is being spread around.
I think the point here isn't the religion, so much as the action and, perhaps even more important, the reaction after the fact.There were those who jumped to the conclusion that this must have been done by Muslim extremists. That was wrong.
Now, because it was done by a Christian extremist, there are those who feel Muslim extremism is somehow vindicated, absolved of guilt, etc. One man wrote to me and asked what percentage of Muslims are terrorists. Obviously, if you factor in the hundreds of millions of Muslims in the world, only a fraction of a fraction can be counted as among those who have crossed the line into barbarity.
I asked him a different question. What percentage of terrorists are Muslim? He didn't like that question; didn't really respond to it. We got into a discussion of profiling. He said it was racist; I said it was a necessary evil. He said it was humiliation. I said better the humiliation of one; than the deaths of dozens. I explained that I go through checkpoints every day of my life; the difference in the way I am treated and the way the Arabs are treated is in the few minutes it takes to ask for their identity papers or permits.
He said those few minutes were too long; I said you would not feel that way if it was your child. I told him about Aliza; about the months of trauma she has been slowly overcoming. I sent him links to posts about her. He said he would read them.
When it comes to setting up fishing trips and trying to provoke an incident, The Guardian’s Jerusalem correspondent (Chicken Lady) Harriet Sherwood (no comments allowed) is right on board.
Strangely, when Hamas carries out two extra-judicial killings of two Palestinians Harriet seems to have forgotten where Gaza is and the best the Guardian can manage is a brief AP report .
So Harriet, I’m not sure where in the world you were when Hamas executed two people, but just in case you and the Guardian need a reminder, here is where they do it. (The map might also might be helpful to show you what to avoid when organizing your next fishing trip):
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For more than a hundred years, Jews have had a dream called ‘Zion’. It has been a dream to create a national homeland for the Jewish people in the land of Israel. But this modern dream has a flaw. It is not the original Zion. It is a secular Zion. It is not organically whole. It is not authentic. It is imperfect.
Today, we see those imperfections. Indeed, the call has already been sounded to move ‘beyond’ Zion, to replace this flawed Zion with a new dream –a post-Zion dream. Those who trumpet this call seek an Israel emptied of Judaism, to create a State that will be both free and new. But the ideology of this new post-Zion is not new. In the Jewish Tanach, we see repeatedly how Jewish kings of the past have sought this same dejudaizing dream; and their results have always been the same—disaster for the Jewish people.
The dream of the new post-Zionist is no different than the dream of the old rebellions—and yet the modern dreamer expects a different result. The new dreamer is adamant: our only chance to remain free is to drop all that is Jewish; our only chance for a true peace is to dejudaize Israel. The new dreamer believes this fervently. But the flaw of his dream is revealed by an unexpected source--Corporate America, where managers report what they have learned in the harsh cauldron that is business in America: the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over while always expecting a different result. And, Corporate America reminds us, insanity is not the key to survival or success.
The post-Zionist dream is wrong. This dream would not yield different results. Life—and history-- do not work that way. Post-Zionists are the new rebellious kings of Tanach: their dream would bring a nightmare to the Jewish people.
The dream of the original Zion is eternal. Newer is not better. Yes, the modern secular Zionist dream has served the Jewish people -- to this point-- for it has been primarily through the effort of the modern secular Zionist that we have our modern Jewish State. But because that dream is flawed, it is a dream that can weaken and die. The post-Zionist is right. If we are to remain successful, something has to change.
But change does not mean we replace Zion. We need to renew Zion. In American sports, if you want to win the Big Prize (the World Series, the Super Bowl, the National Championship), you do not change who you are when the competition increases: you continue forward by relying on your known strengths—or, as the saying goes, you “go with what brung you here”: you play the way you have always played; you do not change what is your hallmark game-plan.
U.S. aid to the Palestinian Authority has become an increasingly controversial matter in the wake of the group’s decision to bypass peace negotiations and go to the United Nations for recognition of an independent state. But the outlay of funds to the Palestinians may become even more toxic after the release of a report by a media watch organization detailing the payment of salaries from the U.S.-funded PA to imprisoned terrorists.
The report from Palestinian Media Watch, an Israeli-based organization that monitors the Palestinian media and culture, said that more than 5,500 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails are getting salaries from the PA. Though Palestinians held by Israel on charges of terrorism have always received stipends from the PA, the practice was formalized this past April when a new law to that effect was promulgated. The law was reported in the Palestinian official press but went unnoticed by the international media. Given that the United States gives more than $600 million to the Palestinians each year, including $225 million that goes directly to the PA, the payment of these salaries is a violation of U.S. law.
As the authors of the report pointed out when they presented their findings to members of Congress on Tuesday, the 2010 legislation that authorized aid to the PA said the State Department must “take all appropriate steps to ensure that such assistance is not provided to or through any individual, private or government entity, or educational institution that the Secretary knows or has reason to believe advocates, plans, sponsors, engages in, or has engaged in, terrorist activity.”
The PA’s payment of salaries to convicted terrorists is a clear violation of this law.
In addition to speaking of the cash layouts to terrorists (which actually exceed the salaries paid to Palestinian civil servants), the report also discussed the incitement against Israel and Jews that is published and broadcast by the Palestinian official media. Another egregious example of Palestinian incitement was the fact that a summer camp sponsored by PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad divided children into three groups–each named for terrorists.
For those who have followed the history of U.S. aid to the Palestinians, this is familiar stuff. Ever since the original Oslo Accords, the State Department has made it a practice to either ignore or to deny all reports of PA support for terror or glorification of terrorists. Throughout this period, such outrages have been swept under the carpet by diplomats intent on pursuing an agenda of appeasement of the Palestinians in the vain hope this will cause them to make peace. But the United States has not been rewarded for its generosity.
We can only hope this latest evidence of Palestinian treachery will finally motivate Congress and the White House to hold the PA accountable and stop the flow of money from American taxpayers to terrorists.
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Haaretz is a small-circulation Israeli daily with huge influence about the Jewish state's image across the world. Within Israel, it's the most leftist of all mass media, denouncing any and all politicians who are not ready to cede as much land as possible to the Palestinians. Not only does Haaretz instill its anti-Zionist propaganda in editorials and commentaries, but also in coloring its "news" articles to fit its radical, ideological agenda.
In Israel, Haaretz's influence is negligible. It basically follows the party line of far-left Meretz, but that party has shriveled to insignificance in recent elections.
Where Haaretz causes the gravest damage to Israel is abroad -- in dispatches of maintream media correspondents, who regard its English edition as their bible and copiously cite and quote Haaretz in their Israel-bashing reports as a supposedly unimpeachable source.
Readers, however, should be on guard. In pursuit of its own ultra-leftist bent, Haaretz often goes beyond spins to downright falsehoods in attacking Israel's rightful place in the Promised Land.
Here's but the latest example of how Haaretz bends and distorts truth against the Jewish state.
In its July 25 edition, it reports on a YouTube video posted by Israel's deputy foreign minister, Danny Ayalon, titled "The Truth About the West Bank." In the short video, which already has racked up more than 120,000 views, Ayalon concedes that Israel has been remiss in not challenging the fictional Palestinian narrative about rightful ownership of Jerusalem and the West Bank.
To set the record straight, Ayalon highlights -- with simple but catchy illustrations -- mainstream media references to East Jerusalem and the West Bank as "occupied territories." Not so, he declares, these are not "occupied" lands, but "disputed" lands. Why? For the simple reason that before their capture by Israel in its defensive war against Arab armies in 1967, they didn't belong to the Palestinians. There was no Palestine. These areas had been illegally "occupied" by Jordan in 1948 - 49 -- a Jordanian occupation that, with the exception of a couple of nations, the international community never recognized. For a sovereign owner of East Jerusalem and the West Bank before 1967, one has to go back to the Ottoman Empire, which disappeared after World War I.
Ayalon also takes on the Palestinian narrative about 1967 "borders" -- a fallacious term universally used by mainstream media. There were no "borders" in 1967, he points out, only a line based on a 1949 armistice, which stipulated that said line did not imply endorsement of international borders.
And furthermore, Ayalon also takes issue with another favorite semantic distortion in mainstream media -- the constant reference to Israeli "illegal settlements" in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. Since this is "disputed" territory, he points out, the existence of settlements doesn't rise to any level of illegality.
Ayalon ends by noting that settlements and final "borders" are indeed proper topics for direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, but that in the meantime, it's essential that Israel challenge fictional Palestinian narratives that are peddled uncritically by mainstream media.
Ayalon's video, a big hit on YouTube, drew a sharp retort from Saeb Erekat, the Palestinians' chief propagandist, who insisted that the West Bank and East Jerusalem are "occupied" territories and that Jewish settlements are "illegal" -- without providing a shred of legal or historical evidence for such canards.
Haaretz reports all this, but adds its own pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel spin. It ends up telling readers that negotiations are on hold, with Palestinians conditioning renewal of talks on a unilateral Israeli construction freeze "in the OCCUPIED West Bank and East Jerusalem."
In short, Haaretz lines up squarely with the Palestinians' demonstrably false propaganda, letting Ayalon know that the paper's ideological agenda against Israel tops any obeisance to accuracy.
As far as Haaretz is concerned, it will continue to spew Palestinian propaganda, regardless of Israel's factual historical and legal rights in East Jerusalem and the West Bank.
In the process, Haaretz also sends a not so subtle signal to Western media, including the New York Times and the Washington Post , that they can continue to rely on its misnamed "news" columns as sources for their own Israel-bashing coverage.
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Norway's ambassador to Israel drew distinctions between the Oslo and Utoeya massacres and Palestinian terrorism. Svein Sevje said in an Israeli newspaper interview Tuesday that while the Norwergian bomb and gun rampages that killed 76 people and Palestinian attacks should both be considered morally unacceptable, he wanted to "outline the similarity and the difference in the two cases.
"Palestinians, the ambassador told Maariv, "are doing this because of a defined goal that is related to the Israeli occupation. There are elements of revenge against Israel and hatred of Israel. To this you can add the religious element to their actions." ..."We Norwegians consider the occupation to be the cause of the terror against Israel," he said. "Those who believe this will not change their mind because of the attack in Oslo."
Since we all know that Arab terror preceded the 1967 war, "occupation" cannot be the cause - unless, of course, all of Zionism and the return of Jews to their homeland is defined as an "occupation". And, I'm guessing, the ambassador and the political establishment of Norway does believe that. Like that "boycott" sign at the island the day before the slaughter.
Woe is Norway.
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Yesterday, Jonathan discussed Israeli concerns the Palestinian Authority’s bid for UN recognition as a state in September might spark a third intifada. But while the PA’s indifference to Israel’s fears might be understandable, its blatant disregard of its own people’s concerns ought to trouble the West.
Last week, The Israel Project released further results of its in-depth survey of Palestinian opinion, conducted by American pollster Stanley Greenberg and the Palestinian Center for Public Opinion via face-to-face interviews with 1,010 Palestinians. The poll’s first section, which focused on Palestinians’ long-term goals, found that 66 percent view a two-state solution as a mere stepping-stone to their ultimate goal of Israel’s eradication. The current section, which focused on near-term goals, found that fully 80 percent of Palestinians listed job creation as one of their two top priorities, far outstripping the second-place choice (healthcare, at 36 percent). By contrast, only 4 percent deemed UN recognition of a Palestinian state a top priority, while only 1 percent viewed mass protests against Israel as a priority.
But the problem isn’t just that Palestinians don’t view UN recognition as a priority. It’s that the bid for UN recognition directly undermines the goal they do consider top priority: job creation.
First, the statehood bid easily could lead to renewed violence – which would devastate the Palestinian economy just as the second intifada did – because it creates expectations that can’t be met. UN recognition of a Palestinian state won’t bring statehood any closer in practice; Israeli troops and settlements won’t suddenly disappear. The ensuing frustration might well spark renewed Palestinian terror, or else mass protests that could quickly degenerate into violence especially if terrorists utilize their favorite trick of stationing snipers in the crowds to force Israeli soldiers to return fire).
This is especially likely because some Palestinian leaders are irresponsibly calling for precisely that. Just last week, Marwan Barghouti, the Fatah leader who is widely considered the second intifada’s architect, called for mass protests in September from the Israeli jail where he is serving five life sentences for murder. And Barghouti remains wildly popular among Palestinians: Indeed, polls show he would beat Hamas’s candidate by a larger margin than current PA President Mahmoud Abbas would.
But even if violence doesn’t materialize, Israel will presumably penalize the PA somehow for blatantly violating yet another signed agreement – in this case, the 1995 Interim Agreement, which states that “Neither side shall initiate or take any step that will change the status of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip pending the outcome of the permanent status negotiations.” And any Israeli response is likely to hurt the PA’s economy: Israel is the PA’s largest trading partner; Israelis employed 11 percent of all working Palestinians last year; and under the very same Oslo Accords that the UN bid violates, Israel collects and transfers up to $1.4 billion a year in taxes for the PA, which comprise two-thirds of the PA budget.
Hence, the PA’s UN bid undermines its own people’s top priority. And that ought to make Western countries think twice about supporting it.
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Hezbollah has made no hydrocarbon discoveries, but seems eager to discover a new border conflict.
Tensions are rising in the eastern Mediterranean between Israel and Lebanon, this time over roughly 430 square miles of contested waters that contain considerable underwater gas reserves. Iran, Hezbollah and Syria are all interested in a war with Israel, each for their own reasons. Tehran and Damascus want to save the embattled regime of Bashar Assad, while Hezbollah seeks to protect its top officials from charges that they were involved in the assassination of late Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. A new war in the Middle East would aid all these goals—and be a disaster for the U.S., already embroiled in withdrawals from Afghanistan and Iraq and a military operation in Libya.
Both Israel and Lebanon have trillions of cubic feet of underwater natural gas and can benefit tremendously from these resources. All they need is the goodwill to negotiate a sea-border demarcation agreement. This usually occurs through bilateral negotiations or mutually agreed arbitration—not through U.N. border-dispute mechanisms, as Lebanon is now demanding.
In 2000, the U.N. meticulously traced the Israel-Lebanon land border when Israel withdrew from southern Lebanon. At the time, the U.N. did not establish a maritime border between the two countries and no one seemed to mind. Lebanon has made no hydrocarbon discoveries since, but it does seem eager to discover another border conflict: It's only now that Israel has identified substantial natural gas in the Tamar and Leviathan fields that Hezbollah, the Iranian and Syrian regimes' long arm in Lebanon, has decided to make an issue of the maritime borders.
Lebanon's Hezbollah-dominated government has called Israel's proposed border an "aggression" and is now threatening to attack any Israeli gas projects—even those in undisputed waters. It wants the U.N. to arbitrate the border dispute under the Law of the Sea Treaty, to which Israel is not even a party. More troubling still, the U.S. State Department has reportedly endorsed Hezbollah's preferred solution of throwing the matter to the U.N.—despite the fact that the U.S. never ratified the treaty either.
The stakes are high for the U.S. and Israel. Hezbollah is armed with Chinese-designed, Iranian-made C-802 anti-ship missiles that could be devastating against future Israeli off-shore gas platforms and tankers. Hezbollah also has sea-born commando units.
The State Department's fear of a flare-up in the Mediterranean and its newfound preoccupation with the Law of the Sea Treaty should not result in coddling a terrorist organization and the state it is running. Washington would do better to stand by its democratic ally and reject Hezbollah's Tehran- and Damascus-inspired position, which can only further escalate tensions in the Levant. Washington should clarify that the two countries need to settle the border dispute between themselves—and both enjoy the benefits from their underwater natural resources.
Mr. Cohen is senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation.
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(A number of excellent points, good questions, and worth some thought. Yosef)
Israel's prime minister, Benyamin Netanyahu, recently complained that the whole world makes demands upon Israel in the name of Middle East peace, but nobody demands anything of the Palestinians. We could add that Netanyahu's predecessors, too, demanded little of them. The Israeli approach to peace negotiations was to offer piecemeal concessions to the Palestinians, hoping for reciprocity.
Yet even Netanyahu has merely asked for Palestinian recognition of Israel as the nation state of the Jews. That is, he asks for a statement of words, which the Palestinians could ignore later on. By contrast, Israel faces demands to establish facts on the ground, such as the removal or at least the freezing of settlements. Thus Netanyahu, too, has not yet overcome the disproportion of demands.
In order to know what to demand of the Palestinians, one must first know what they want to get. Surprisingly, what exactly the Palestinians want is little known even in Israel. This is because the Israeli media pay little attention to Arab affairs in general. The average Israeli hardly hears more about the neighborhood, the Arab world, than does the average European or North American. This applies also to Israeli politicians and peace activists.
In the Palestinian media, by contrast, Palestinian wishes and intentions are made very clear. The fundamental Palestinian stance and negotiating strategy is found in countless speeches and articles. So I shall explain, first, what that Palestinian stance is. Second, why the Palestinians now refuse to negotiate. As we shall see, this is because the Quartet (US, EU, Russia and UN) has already conceded to them as much as they wanted to get from negotiations. Third, what demand has to be made of the Palestinians in order to oblige them to negotiate after all.
Already in the Palestinian parliamentary elections of 2006, all the competing parties, Hamas as well as Fatah, proclaimed their allegiance to what were called the three "national issues." These were: 1) Israel must withdraw to the lines preceding the Six Day Way; 2) the Palestinian state must be created with Jerusalem as its capital; 3) all the Palestinian refugees of 1948 and 1967, together with their millions of descendants, must be allowed to return to where they were living up to 1947.
JERUSALEM (JTA) — The United Nations deferred the release of its findings on Israel’s deadly seizure of a Gaza-bound Turkish ship to give Jerusalem and Ankara more time to mend fences. An inquiry set up by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon had been due to publish a report on the 2010 Mavi Marmara incident Wednesday, but Israeli officials said the release was moved to Aug. 20. The report has been postponed repeatedly while Israel and Turkey, both of which have delegates on the U.N. panel under former New Zealand Prime Minister Geoffrey Palmer, pursue bilateral reconciliation talks.
I wouldn’t put it that way, folks.
The report has been delayed because it would cut the ground out from under the absurd Turkish position, which is that Israel needs to ‘apologize’ for several of its soldiers defending themselves in the only way possible, from beaten and stabbed to death.
The report is said to conclude that Israel’s blockade of Gaza is legal, and that the Turkish state had direct involvement in the flotilla and the militant IHH that provided the thugs who attacked the boarding party, as I wrote at the time. It also reportedly says “the IDF acted ‘too soon’ and with excess force,” but after all — this is the UN we are talking about.
If this is correct, then the report shows that the Mavi Marmara incident did not ‘just happen’. While it could perhaps have been prevented by better intelligence and planning on the Israeli side, it was clearly designed by the Turkish leadership to further widen the breach between Israel and Turkey which was initiated by Turkish PM Erdoğan when he walked off the stage at Davos in January 2009, after accusing Israel of murder:
Erdoğan has threatened to downgrade diplomatic relations with Israel even further if Israel does not meet his demands:
The past month has been a difficult one for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for the Palestinians (UNRWA). First Palestinians in Hamas-controlled Gaza held mass protests against the agency's attempt to change its name to the United Nations Agency for Palestinian Refugees.
Conspiracy theories claimed the name change was part of a secret plan to end the Palestinians' refugee status so as to block their demand to "return" to Israel.
UNRWA officials explained repeatedly to the public and to Hamas terror masters that this was not the case. The agency's devotion to the cause of "return" remained unchanged. The name change was just a bid to streamline their website to mark the agency's 60th anniversary.
But to no avail. Within days, the name change was canceled.
But that didn't end UNRWA's problems. Last week, demonstrators returned to protest against the agency, this time for its cutbacks in benefits. Protesters blocked the entrance to UNRWA's offices and generally frightened its employees.
In response to the protests, UNRWA's spokesman Chris Gunness gave an interview to the Palestinian Ma'an news agency. His clear goal was to shift the blame away from UNRWA for the unpopular policies. First Gunness criticized UNRWA's donor countries. They have not answered UNRWA's call for hundreds of millions of extra aid dollars to UNRWA - whose annual budget is in excess of $1 billion.
Then Gunness shifted the blame to UNRWA's favorite bogeyman: Israel.
Israel, he claimed, is responsible for all of Gaza's economic woes because of its lawful maritime blockade of the Hamas-ruled territory's coastline. Gunness ignored the fact that despite that lawful blockade, which he falsely labeled "a clear breach of international law," Gaza has experienced overall economic growth in recent years. Its markets are full. It suffers no blockade-induced shortages in basic goods.
As he put it, "From UNRWA's point of view, it would be better for those states and organizations with the power to bring the necessary pressures to bear [on Israel] to end the collective punishment rather than pay UNRWA to deal with its disastrous impact."
Before I touch on this theme, I want to return just for a moment to the issue of perks for terrorists in our prisons. It made the news a few days ago that Marwan Barghouti -- who is in the Hadarim prison, west of Netanya -- called for a million-person march of Palestinian Arabs when the UN vote on a state was taking place. I pondered then -- and a reader wrote to ask the same question -- how it was that he could get out the word this way and make headlines. Barghouti is serving five life sentences and should never be heard from again.
It has subsequently been reported by the Israeli Prison Service that during a routine search of prisoners' cells (to be certain no one is hiding knives, contraband, etc.), a cell phone was discovered in Barghouti's possession. He was sent for a disciplinary hearing and sentenced to two weeks in isolation.
Perhaps the situation truly is shifting with regard to taking a tougher stance with terrorists. Or maybe the Prison Service is simply now publicizing what would have gone unnoticed previously. It is noteworthy that the phone was reported as having been discovered during a "routine" search, and not because a search was done specifically in response to Barghouti having made the news.
Barghouti, it should be noted, is with Fatah, not Hamas.
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The zig-zagging I refer to has to do with the Palestinian Authority. Last week Nabil Amr, a member of the PLO Central Committee, became the first senior PLO official to publicly state opposition to plans to go to the UN in September. In an interview in Al-Quds Al-Arabi (London) he expressed fears that the US and major European countries will be alienated and that this will rebound badly on the PA:
"The council will discuss the September issue and the intention to go to the UN.
“I personally will advise the leadership to delay the UN bid by another year so that we would be able to make better preparations than what has been done until now.”
According to Khaled Abu Toameh and Herb Keinon, who reported on this in the JPost, several other PA leaders are also opposed to the UN bid, but have refrained from saying so publicly.
~~~~~~~~~~
However, at the very same time, PA negotiator Nabil Sha'ath has declared, "We are serious about going to the UN and won't backtrack..."
And, according to Abu Toameh, Fatah and Hamas have decided to try again to come to terms on the details of the reconciliation accord. This follows a phone call between Azzam al-Ahmed, who has headed the Fatah delegation for negotiations, and Musa Abu Marzouk, deputy head of the Hamas polit bureau.
The effort by Fatah to achieve reconciliation is understood to be an expression of its desire to go to the UN presenting one government that represents all the people.
On the other hand, if it were not for Fatah insistence on retaining Salam Fayyad as prime minister, something that Hamas adamantly opposes, the issue might have been resolved by now.
Zig zag. A reflection not only of indecision, but also diverse opinions within the PA.
~~~~~~~~~~
Meanwhile, Abbas is putting his own spin on matters.
The decision to go to the UN, he has now declared, does not constitute a unilateral act. The UN vote, after all, will not prevent the Palestinian Arabs from returning to the table: "there are issues that won't be solved through the UN, but only through negotiations."
What the UN vote will do, you see, will enable them to enter negotiations with Israel as "equal partners." Then, once there is a Palestinian state, it can sit down with Israel and "discuss sticking issues, including borders, Jerusalem, refugees, settlements, water and security."
This is his have-his-humus-and-eat-it-too approach.
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And speaking of Israel's borders, Danny Ayalon has hit home with his six-minute historical narrative video, "The Truth About the West Bank."
Saeb Erekat, calling the video "offensive," says, “Now, the international community knows the Israeli government is committed to denying the Palestinian people their inalienable right to self-determination and on continuing their illegal and colonial enterprise in the occupied Palestinian territory."
Not quite. Now the international community has been presented with truths that combat the PA lies, and the PA does not like it, not one little bit. Right on!
Ayalon has challenged Erekat to a debate. Seriously doubt his challenge will be accepted.
I share the link here for the second time. If you haven't seen it, please do, if you haven't shared it, I encourage this, as well.
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This is the tiny golden bell which was lost in Jerusalem some 2,000 years ago during the Second Temple period found among ruins near the Old City. The bell, which is thought to have been an adornment which was sewn onto the garments of a senior official, was uncovered during excavation work on a drainage channel in the City of David, just south of the Old City walls. "It seems the bell was sewn on the garment worn by a high official in Jerusalem at the end of the Second Temple period," an IAA statement said.
This a recording of the bell provided by Udi Ragones, Ir David Foundation Spokesman
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One anniversary has not gone unmarked by the BBC, of all broadcasters - the fiftieth anniversary of the smuggling of over 500 Jewish children from Morocco to Israel in Operation Mural. Last week, it was the subject of a 10-minute World Service Radio programme - Witness. (Click link below to hear program)
Mural was Mossad's code-name for David Littman, whose cover was a public-school-educated Anglican gentleman, on tennis-playing terms with the British consul, and with excellent security contacts in Casablanca. His mission was to defy the Moroccan ban on Jews wishing to emigrate to Israel.
Yossi Shahar was one of the children smuggled out to what the Moroccan authorities thought was a holiday camp in Switzerland. In fact Switzerland was a way-station to Israel - and the children, although separated from their parents, had no intention of coming back home.
Alan Johnson - the BBC journalist who spent several months as a Hamas captive in Gaza - narrates the programme. All credit to producer Helena Selby who managed to surmount many obstacles in order to get this programme out on air.
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I visited Hevron in November 2000 after the outbreak of the Rosh Hashanah War to see what could be done to assist in the face of the growing daily attacks on the community. After returning to work for the community in the summer of 2001, a bond and a love was forged that grows to this day. My wife Melody and I merited to be married at Ma'arat HaMachpela and now host visitors from throughout the world every Shabbat as well as during the week. Our goal, "Time to come Home!"
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